Actually it’s not. But I don’t wish to start up THAT argument again. So, believe whatever you wish…
[quote=“Raizen1984”]
Actually it’s not. [/quote]
Don’t you get it?No one cares for gameplay.
[quote=“GehnTheBerserker”]
Actually it’s not.
Don’t you get it?No one cares for gameplay.[/quote]
Really? Than perhaps I was mistaken. Afterall why would anyone play a game to actually GASP PLAY a game?
Don’t take it seriously. No one listens to Gehn anyway.
Panzer Orta sucked in my opinion… Halo 2 just sucks comparitively (again, in my opinion).
Shadow, pardon me for asking, but might I ask what precisely is so objectionable about Halo 2 to you? I find it incredibly difficult to fault - indeed, the only major criticism I have is that the Flood haven’t died off. Lord. I. Despise. The. Flood. 
The storyline, whilst again being. far from being a candidate for the Man Booker Prize (to reiterate myself), is much more highly developed than the original with the substantial flesh that’s applied to the concept of the Covenant, which was scarcely a skeleton in Combat Evolved. The dialogue is superior, and the cutscenes are much more cinematic.
The gameplay is substantially more sophisticated as well, with a whole arsenal of new armaments, an expanded Covenant roster, and addtional action elements such as dual-wielding and vehicle hijacking. Those vehicles also constitute a much more pivotal function - in the original Halo, your Banshee did no more than buzz about a few canyons. In Halo 2, an entire stage was devoted to an air battle! Having more than one opportunity to smash through the opposition in the Scrorpion was also much appreciated 
. I also welcomed the inclusion of some boss fights (such as vapourising the Heretic and gouging out the eyes of the Prophet of Regret). Heroic difficulty has been accentuated as well, so the challenge remains compelling.
Graphics have been improved upon too. Small touches such as the ability to see your legs and vehicles displaying dilapidation are quite pleasant, and you can’t deny that the environments are also on a much more awesome and expansive scale than the original - as much as I absolutely loathe and despise that abomination of a stage, “Healthy Comeptition”, that I’m currently stuck on (to its designer - I’m going to rip out eight feet of your small intestine and then strangle you with it 
), you can’t deny that the first time you witness the blazing Library under siege is utterly arresting.
And I haven’t even finished the game yet!
As far as I’m concerned, the only thing wrong with Halo 2 is that it isn’t Half-Life 2. But I guess there really can be only one HL2, so I’ll let it slide.
As far as Orta goes, the core gameplay is absolutely great. Unfortunately, the art style and storyline kind of fly in the face of the rest of the series.
Halo 2 isn’t as fun as Halo. Sure it improved many things but gameplay is rather flat in comparison.
[quote=“Raizen1984”]
Actually it’s not.
Don’t you get it?No one cares for gameplay.
Really? Than perhaps I was mistaken. Afterall why would anyone play a game to actually GASP PLAY a game?[/quote]
It’s tnot the gameplay that bugs most of us.It’s the drastic change in the art department and personally the drastic change in music.It doens’t feel Panzerish.I don’t know your PD experience but after playing all 3 Saturn games I was expecting to see evolution, yes, but not such a drastic change in the design of the PanDra world.
Drastic change I can understand. HOW it’s changed, however, is stupid. There’s a lot more colour now, for instance.
[quote=“GehnTheBerserker”]
Actually it’s not.
Don’t you get it?No one cares for gameplay.
Really? Than perhaps I was mistaken. Afterall why would anyone play a game to actually GASP PLAY a game?
It’s tnot the gameplay that bugs most of us.It’s the drastic change in the art department and personally the drastic change in music.It doens’t feel Panzerish.I don’t know your PD experience but after playing all 3 Saturn games I was expecting to see evolution, yes, but not such a drastic change in the design of the PanDra world.[/quote]
Fine.
I chose to see it from a different perspective. The art style may be different, but it’s still unique and beautiful. The added use of color, to me, was meant to represent that the world was changing for the better. The original trilogy had an art style that showed a world that was grey, desolate and extremely hostile. With Sestren permanently out of commision (sp?) it wouldn’t make sense to keep the artsyle the way it was.
Change isn’t bad, just so you know.
[quote=“Raizen1984”]I chose to see it from a different perspective. The art style may be different, but it’s still unique and beautiful. The added use of color, to me, was meant to represent that the world was changing for the better. The original trilogy had an art style that showed a world that was grey, desolate and extremely hostile. With Sestren permanently out of commision (sp?) it wouldn’t make sense to keep the artsyle the way it was.
Change isn’t bad, just so you know.[/quote]
Which brings us nicely to my pet peeve. Sestren isn’t permanently out of commission, even though it’s supposed to be. Oops.
I meant the A.I. is out of commission (Sestren Exis) not the actual place. With nothing controlling it, it can’t do anymore harm.
Yeah, I know. It’s just that I really don’t like how Smilebit twisted their way out of what should’ve been the end of the Ancient Age’s influence over the world. The ruins should be dead, the pure types should be dead, and everything about Sestren (including the dragon) should be dead. That was the whole point of the end of PDS. Instead, everything pretty much stayed the same except for some supposed geographical upheavals that we don’t really know that much about. The monsters are still around terrorizing people, the ruins are still very much active, and the world is still under the heel of the ancients. It really cheapens the events that took place in PDS.
Just a few things:
-
The Dragon has nothing to do with Sestren. The Heresy Program left the dragon after Sestren was destroyed and was subsequently erased by the Divine Visitor. The physical dragon still exists, just without the Heresy Program.
-
The ruins are still active, but no longer serve a purpose.
-
The monsters are still around, but they are no longer bound by Sestrens laws.
The point of the end of PDS was a liberation of the CONTROL the ancients still had over the current world. Remnants of the ancients still exist but they are no longer dutifully attempting to annihilate mankind.
Yeah, see this is the part I don’t buy. The dragon is a pure-type, and all pure-types are inextricably linked to Sestren (or, in the dragon’s case, the Heresy Program, which is sort of like another version of Sestren).
Plus, the dragon’s one and only purpose was to eliminate Sestren’s control over the world. It accomplished that in Saga, and the only possible justification for its return is the reactivation of Sestren. And that hasn’t happened.
It sure looks like they are to me. They still attack on sight. And, technically, they were never trying to annihilate it, just limit its size.
Bah, anyway, this is all just a matter of interpretation.
You’re confusing the two creatures. I believe that the physical dragon itself is actually Lagi from Zwei, the Heresey Program possesed the creature when it entered the seal in Shelcoof. The Program wanted to eliminate Sestren so it could take over, it didn’t care about anything else (hence the name ‘heresey’).
The Dragon returned to protect Orta as sort of a favor to the late Edge.
You’re right though, this all based on interpretation. This is just what I got out of it.
I do agree that Edge’s sacrifice doesn’t seem to have achieved a great deal from what we see in PDO. In PDO’s defence though, PDS did seem to imply that the dragon lived on in the end, as Gash heard the beating of its wings during his epilogue; in that case at least, Smilebit seemed to be following PDS’ lead.
Having played Orta myself, I honestly can’t comprehend what’s so grossly offensive about the ‘changed’ art style - I think that the world is marvellously depicted. It remains faithful to the image of the previous Panzer Dragoon games - Imperial warships are still operated by clunky steam contraptions and ungainly scaffolds erected about the weird, ossified Float Engines; the pure-type monsters remain unearthly and faceless; and in the tame Baldors and the beast the Wormrider’s vilage was built on you had monsters from Saga! I also fail to see why the inclusion of more colour so catastrophically ruins the playing experience - a brighter pallete in areas such as Episode II is not inconsistent with the world of the previous games at all, because they had their own verdant and thriving forests… and it wasn’t as if SmileBit were erasing the scars from the earth, either - what of the Li Vis ash desert in Episode III?
Concerning the issue of Sestren’s ‘survival’, I incline to agree with Raizen. In Saga, the Heresy Program vanquished what could be said to be Sestren’s ‘CPU’ - but that still leaves the equivalent of the ‘hard drive’ intact - the data and the apparatus is there, but there’s no brain to utilise it.
Incidentally, Lagi’s existence was not dependent on the Heresy Program - remember that the mutant Coolia he was originally was impregnated after birth. And in the previous Panzer Dragoon games, you should note that you only encountered pure-type monsters when you pried into Ancient ruins, and they remained parochial and confined to the area - they weren’t constantly seeking out humans to kill. Thus pure-type monsters have a basic core program which is to defend their assigned relics - as essentially organic robots, the pure-types would continue to mechanically fulfil this function even when the purpose for it (with Sestren’s destruction) was long lost.
And isn’t it being rather ungracious to the intelligence of the Panzer Dragoon games to claim that the ending of Saga tied everything up neatly with a bow? 
It’s hard to be conclusive about these things, but I get the impression that the dragon-program had already entered into Lagi before he was born; at least, he was born with wings and the glowing green light in his throat (the “bioluminary oscillator” organ), and it seems likely that those evolutions - like the ones that Lagi continues to undergo - were the program’s doing, the start of its growth process that would ultimately turn him into the Solo Wing / Blue Dragon. (But of course, I agree that his existence wouldn’t be dependant on the program.)